| Research Question | Does the amount of salt you water a plant with affect the rate of germination |
|---|---|
| Predictions | If there's more salt then the process of germination will be slower. |
| Experimental Design | 1. Label each petri dishes for what type of water you're using to water the plant. 2. Mix up solutions of water that include salt. Poor 3 cups of water into separate areas. In one solution there should be no salt in another solution there should be 1 teaspoon of salt and in the final solution should have 2-3 teaspoons of salt. 3.Put 10 buck wheat seeds in 1 petri dish ( there's 30 overall so there's 3 petri dishes and 10 seeds in each). 4. Water the seeds with the proper solution for each petri dish ( 1 should have normal water the second one should have 1 teaspoon of salt and the third one should have 2 teaspoons of water) 5. Put under light for 7 - 8 hours. |
| Conclusion | Salt produces the ability to absorb water and takes it away from the plant, making the process of germination slow to the point that it takes forever to germinate. Even with our procedure, it seemed that the seeds with salt in their water that nothing seemed to look different from when we first started our experiment. The seeds that just had regular water with no salt in it had great results; it actually started to photosynthesize! The reason the plants with 2 tsp and 4 tsp of salt didn’t grow at all is because when a plant is exposed to more salt than it’s used to, the plants ability to absorb water is reduced by osmosis. A process by which molecules of a solvent tend to pass through a semipermeable membrane from a less concentrated solution into a more concentrated one, thus equalizing the concentrations on each side of the membrane |
| Investigation Theme | WOS |
| Grade Level | Middle School Students (grades 6,7,8) |
| School Name | DeWitt Middle School |
| Session | Spring 2019 |